


Promises to Keep

by spemhabemus



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Episode: s01e15 Before I Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 03:04:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2531714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spemhabemus/pseuds/spemhabemus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Both John and Elizabeth survive the time travel to the Ancients' Atlantis in Before I Sleep.  They wake up for the first time to rotate the ZPM's to a city that's been sleeping for 3300 years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promises to Keep

Elizabeth heard the hiss of the balcony door and whirled around to see John standing behind her.  She registered surprise and then an attempt to mask the shock on his face, just as she felt her own expression similarly contorting.  “I thought you were supposed to be in stasis still,” she said.

“Janus programmed the second stasis chamber to open if the first one wasn’t re-sealed within an hour of its opening.”  John’s hair was completely grey, although still thick and full, and crow’s feet lined his eyes.  He approached Elizabeth with a slight limp and placed a vein-threaded hand on the railing next to hers.  Her skin was thinner and her hands looked bonier, but she had been afraid to look in the mirror at her face.  Time would have warped her into a 60-year-old or thereabouts, and she didn’t know if she was ready to face the sudden change without the context of the decades that had melted away from her while she slumbered.

“I’m sorry.”  Elizabeth looked down at the ocean floor rippling beyond the submerged city’s shield.  “I rotated the ZPM’s.  I just got to thinking...I had to see the city one more time before…”

“Right.”  John smiled, his eyes shining as brightly as Elizabeth remembered them from the day they had met.  “This is weird.”

“Janus said stasis would be like a dreamless sleep, but I felt a sort of awareness of the passing of time, and I could hear voices when I was waking up.”  A dolphin-like creature darted around the corner of the tower in front of them.  Elizabeth reached to tuck her hair behind her ear and noted how brittle it was...and how much longer.  “It’s strange to think that everyone I ever cared about on Earth won’t be born for more than six millennia, and all the Ancients we met on Atlantis have been dead for three thousand years now.”

“While we slept.”  John’s voice was almost a whisper.

“It’s almost too much to think about.  Like we’re caught in an era where only we exist or...something silly like that.”  Elizabeth rested her head in her arms, trying to recall the little she had learned about pre-history, vaguely remembering that agriculture would just be taking off now on Earth.  Meanwhile, an entire bay of spaceships waited silently for the next incarnation of John Sheppard.

John’s smile was sympathetic.  “That’s not silly.  It’s just lonely.”

“Yes.  Very.  So Major...tell me about yourself.”

John scratched the back of his neck.  “Maybe we should go back into the stasis chambers now.”

Elizabeth shrugged.  “What’s another few hours in the scope of 10,000 years?  I want to live, Major Sheppard.  I want to experience life, even if this is all we’ve got.”

The silence drove John crazy.  No music, no voices, no sounds from the outside due to the shield...just the all-too-fresh memories of waking up ten thousand years in Atlantis’ past, being told that everyone on Atlantis was dead, Zelenka didn’t make it through the crash, and Elizabeth was in a coma...although she came out of it the next day.  Dressed in strange clothing, which he was still wearing now, these ridiculous linen pants and his sidearm long gone, not that he needed it, but it still provided a measure of comfort, gave him a clinical feeling of forever being trapped in a hospital...or asylum.  He found himself reaching for Elizabeth’s hand.  She let him take it.  Her hand felt small and very cold.  “Why don’t we explore, then.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened.  

“I’ll tell you about myself as we go.  How about that?”  John guided Elizabeth into the room adjoining the balcony.  “This room would be your office.  This is where you would yell at me for screwing up.”

Elizabeth’s laughter released some of her tension.  She freed her hand from his, feeling suddenly self-conscious.  “I think I would keep plants in here.  Lots of plants by the windows.  The kind that don’t need a lot of light.”

John wandered into the gateroom, where he paused to look at the Stargate, sitting motionless and dusty.  So much power unrealized.  “This is where you would stand when you sent me and my team on our first mission, and when we contacted you from another world for the first time.”

The corners of Elizabeth’s mouth twitched.  “Tell me about that mission.”

“Well…”  John rubbed his face, scratchy with stubble that he imagined was grey.  “It would be a beautiful world with a beach and plenty of scantily clad blonde women running around.”

“Intelligent diplomatic scantily clad blonde women, I’m sure.”

“Oh, of course.  Of course.”

“And what would you find there?”

“Lots of ZPMs.  And the cure for cancer that the intelligent half-naked blondes had discovered.  So we could bring that cure back to Earth.”

“Ah.”  Elizabeth turned away from the gate, resting her back on the railing.  She rubbed her forehead.

“Dr. Weir?  Are you all right?” John asked.

Elizabeth cleared her throat.  “Please.  Call me Elizabeth.”

“Deal.  Call me John, then.”  John placed a hand tentatively on her shoulder.  “But are you all right?”

“Oh, you know.  It’s just been three thousand years since I’ve had coffee, that’s all.”

“Let’s find some, then.  The Ancients had to have some method of staying awake too, right?”  John grinned and motioned for Elizabeth to follow him.

The kitchen did not yield anything particularly inspirational, although John did try something that resembled chocolate, even though it had been sitting around for several thousand years.  It was surprisingly palatable.  Elizabeth declined his offer to share it.

They ended up in the commuter ship bay where they had discovered the time traveling ship.  It had since been destroyed, of course, but John settled into the captain’s chair in one of the other ships and displays lit up as soon as he touched the dashboard.

“My God,” Elizabeth muttered.  Her reaction was a dual reaction to her reflection that she had caught in the view port, and the reminder of her last time in a space ship that stabbed her warmly in the chest.

“I do wonder if these can operate as submersibles.”  John had made that inquiry almost to himself, but suddenly the rear hatch shut and a whirring sound could be heard above as the ship backed out of its parked position.

“What did you _do_?” Elizabeth cried, reaching for something to hold onto as she stumbled into one of the seats.

“I don’t know.”  John held both of his hands up.  “It just started flying.”

The ship exited the bay roof through an airlock and began a tour of the city, its magnificent spires illuminated by soft ocean light.

“Does it ever end?” Elizabeth observed the city’s scale.

“This could have all been ours, Elizabeth.”  Bitterness tinged John’s voice.

“It will all be ours.”  She caught John’s eye as he turned from the control console, his eyebrows knit in elegiac sadness that caught at her throat.  “John, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what.”  He turned back toward the city as the ship took them around its perimeter.  

“Sorry that it turned out this way for both of us.  For all of us.”

“I think it’s time for us to sleep again, Elizabeth.”  The ship descended back toward the bay.

“Me, too.”  They rode in silence until they docked again.  John took Elizabeth’s hand.  She squeezed his warmly this time.  They walked slowly to the stasis chamber.

The next time John would wake up alone.  The two of them wouldn’t see each other again until their future selves discovered them...if they survived.  They may get to experience the city floating on the surface of the water.  Or they may never awaken from their sleep.  The rest of their life may whisper out in these stasis chambers.

“Good night, John Sheppard.”  Elizabeth stepped onto the threshold of her chamber.

“Wait,” John said.  He tugged Elizabeth toward him.  “I never told you about myself.”

“It will have to remain a mystery.”  He noticed how green her eyes were, and how much he wanted to cling to that, to something so real in a space so empty and strange.

“Just one thing.”  John stepped closer to her, and she didn’t so much as flinch.  Although her features were sharp, sunken with age, a kindness shimmered around her.  “What I said about that beach planet...I didn’t mean…”

“John, I know.  It was a joke.  Don’t worry about it,” Elizabeth said.

“Well, but…”  He touched her nose with his own.  “I actually prefer brunettes.”  

He was almost surprised that she was the one to kiss him.

Those few seconds would have to last six thousand, seven hundred years.

Elizabeth wrapped John in a hug.  “Sleep well.”

“You, too,” he sighed into her ear.

If the plan succeeded, and John Sheppard and Elizabeth Weir came face-to-face with their own future, they would awaken with their hands pressed against the glass of their separate stasis chambers, gazing at each other with a promise gleaming in their eyes.


End file.
